Computer Security Weekly, Sep.24. 2000


Is your computer getting to you? After hours (or less) in front of the screen do you suffer from itching, red eyes, headaches? Think you may be suffering from the dreaded (horrors!) Computer Monitor Radiation?

Guess again.

A Swedish study has now demonstrated what a number of professionals have suspected all along: these symptoms are caused by outgassing from the monitor and other plastic components, and have nothing to do with radiation. The major culprit is a compound called triphenyl phosphate.

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi...

You may have seen ads for the new :CueCat bar code scanner. You may have noted that the device is being given away free by a number of vendors, including some Radio Shack stores. If you thought that this might have been too good to be true, you might have been right.

The :CueCat scanner is intended to be used to scan URLs from magazine ads, thus saving the user typing, and making it more likely that they would visit sites promoted by the ads. However, the Privacy Foundation has found some disturbing information about how :CueCat actually gets the user to the site. There is also an extensive registration process, and, while :CueCat currently says that it does not collect individual data, the possibility of tagging everything you do on the net does exist.

http://www.privacyfoundation.org/advisor... http://www.privacyfoundation.org/release...

E*Trade allows you to trade securities on the Web. As such, security should be a major concern. However, a BUGTRAQ user appears to have found a loophole that will let someone recover your username and password, effectively allowing them to trade with your account.

Details of the exploit have been provided to E*Trade, but, according to the BUGTRAQ user, E*Trade does not currently intend to change their operation in order to remove the loophole. Details of the exploit have not been made public, but the following actions are recommended:

1) Disable JavaScript at all times. 2) Never use the six-month login feature of the E*TRADE site. 3) Always close and restart your browser before and after using E*Trade. 4) Never visit any other web site while you are using E*TRADE. 5) Search for and remove any cookies from *.etrade.com after using E*Trade.

We mentioned the Palm virus that wasn't a virus a while ago (September 4, 2000). Since then there has been another Palm trojan, and, now, a real, live Palm virus. Phages isn't very interesting, but it does prove that a sufficient number of users means somebody will right a virus for any system.

mailto:rslade@vcn.bc.ca
mailto:rslade@sprint.ca
mailto:robertslade@usa.net
mailto:p1@canada.com Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses, 0-387-94663-2, (800-SPRINGER)
The copyright of the article Computer Security Weekly, Sep.24. 2000 in Computer Security is owned by Robert Slade. Permission to republish Computer Security Weekly, Sep.24. 2000 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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